


twenty minutes

by cartoonheart



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 15:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20509151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonheart/pseuds/cartoonheart
Summary: It's been a long day. The longest. Between jail, and coming home, and her children and him, she's already teetering on the edge.Post 15x25, leading into S16.





	twenty minutes

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Meredith getting out of jail, being reunited with Andrew - and him helping with the kids while she was away.
> 
> Thank you to the person who sent me the prompt. It doesn't stick to the details of your prompt too closely, but it is all there in some degree, so I hope you like it nonetheless. 
> 
> I've decided to publish it as its own fic rather than posting it with [all my other prompt responses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887035/chapters/44830621). I think it's just because I feel like this one went a bit longer than a normal prompt (story of my life) and it just felt more appropriate in the circumstances. 
> 
> Thank you, as ever, to [KatieWho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieWho/pseuds/KatieWho) \- my always helpful and lovely beta.

"What are you doing here?" His voice travels down her spine, and then up again, coming to rest in the space just underneath her ribcage. She'd hoped to avoid him, if only to spare herself the anguish, but he's there - of course he is. 

It's been a long day. The longest. Between jail, and coming home, and her children and him, she's already teetering on the edge. Plus she's here to beg Bailey for her job back and Meredith needs to focus on that - only that. She can't be distracted by the fact that she and Andrew have had barely a minute alone together since she was released this morning, and Meredith's a bit worried about how much that detail is consuming her.

She wants to ignore him, but she won't - not completely. But she can't give him her full attention, otherwise she'll never achieve what she'd set out to do when she drove over here. She can feel him hovering behind her, but she steadfastly keeps her eyes down, the tiny print on her release papers swimming before her eyes. 

"I'm h-here to see Bailey," she manages to stammer, risking a glance in his direction before instantly regretting it and turning quickly away. She doesn't need reminding of how good he looks in scrubs, of the plains of his body. She's thought of little else all these months.

He steps closer still, his front aligning with her back. His arms appear on either side of her, bracing themselves against the counter of the nurse's station. She's effectively boxed in, with no means of escape. "You're not here to see me?" He sounds a touch disappointed, even though he must have anticipated that at the first opportunity she'd come flying back to the hospital. They'd barely had time to speak properly earlier, between her reunion with the children and everything else that was going on. 

Her mouth opens to respond, but no sound comes out. Because even though he's not touching her, intentionally no doubt, her body is screaming out in his presence. She's been deprived of his touch for so long that at this proximity it feels like a siren is going off inside of her.

"Meredith?" he presses, and she detects the faintest hint of his lips tracing against the outer shell of her ear. She tries to repress a gasp but she's not sure she succeeds. 

They can't do this. Not here.

He knows this too. To an onlooker, this isn't innocent at all. And before, she would have scolded him and pushed him away. But that was before - before three months of isolation in a small square of a cell. Three months without her children. Without him.

"Andrew," she finally responds, attempting a calm that she doesn't feel. Even his name feels too rich on her tongue, like a luxury that she's denied herself. There's a tremor in her voice that gives away just how much he's undoing her. Meredith can literally _feel_ his smile next to her ear, even if she can't see it. He's practically vibrating behind her, and she's pretty sure if he did touch her right now, she'd absolutely fall apart.

"I have twenty minutes," he murmurs, voice gruff and urgent. His breath is hot against her neck and her insides turn deliciously. Her fists curl tighter, creasing the paperwork in her hands further. She needs to control herself.

Twenty minutes, she thinks. These past few months she'd dreamed of having five minutes alone with him, let alone twenty. Talking to him through glass and then across a table, unable to touch, had been the worst form of torture.

She turns her head slightly, just enough to catch his eye again. She wishes she hasn't. His pupils are dark, and full of such intense longing that she thinks he might take her then and there if she gives him the slightest indication. This is getting dangerous.

Meredith clears her throat cautiously, trying to keep her voice to a whisper. "And do you really think twenty minutes is enough?" It's a tease, she knows - but in reality she needs to create a buffer between them that will give her some breathing room. She's got three months of pent up energy and the precise man who she needs to release it, and the combination is proving powerful beyond measure.

He raises an eyebrow, amused at the implication. They both know he can do magic with twenty minutes - hell, give him ten and she knows he'd still excel. "I think you and I both know the answer to that. But I have to scrub in with Dr. Webber in half an hour."

Meredith can't lie. She's sorely tempted. She wants nothing more than to drag him into the nearest on call room. Every one of her nerve endings is buzzing, and she's dying to feel the hard imprint of his fingers on her thighs, the weight of his body, the way his tongue-

_No_, she accepts begrudgingly, even though it pains her. The truth is that twenty minutes won't be enough. Because Meredith has not waited three months for something hasty on an uncomfortable on call room mattress, after which he'll run off and scrub in on a surgery that she'd give her right arm to do. The reality is that when she (finally, _finally_) falls into him, she needs to know that they don't have to resurface again for a very, very, long time.

So she tries to play it far cooler than she actually feels. "What's the rush, Dr. DeLuca?" 

She feels a hiss of air release from him and sees the way his hands tighten their grip on the counter. She wishes those hands were on her body, but it's safer this way. Instead she feels the slightest nudge of his nose against her cheek, and a heat curls within her like she's never known. This man, this man will absolutely ruin her, just as much as he's kept her together these last few months.

"This is torture, Mere," he growls, and there's something so primal about it that all she wants to do is tilt her head back and fall against him, just sink into his embrace. Let him take her, possess her, god, she doesn't care. On any other occasion, on a normal day, she'd roll her eyes at him, because Andrew thinks a lot of things are torture: bad Italian food, when it rains for more than three days in a row, when he misplaces his keys. But in this case, he's never been more right about the effect this denial is having on them both.

Barely twelve hours ago, she was told she was being released early from her sentence. And she'd been driven back home by Maggie in a state of disbelief. She was free - totally and completely free to do what she wants, and even to practice medicine again. And she was free to hold her children after three long months of being away from them. 

And as they'd pulled up to the house, they'd been waiting for her on the porch. All three of them, plus Andrew too, with little Ellis on his lap, and Bailey chatting away to him. Amelia had told her during her visits that he'd stayed at the house practically every night since the trial, since Meredith had been gone. She was happy to know that the children had his presence to comfort them too. They'd grown close to him in those weeks before everything had gone so horribly wrong.

He'd hung back as she'd embraced them all, looking on with an air of discomfort and anxiety. Meredith sensed he felt he was intruding on a private moment, even though it couldn't be further from the truth. He'd stepped in to help her sisters when she couldn't be there, and she only felt grateful. When finally Maggie had ushered the children inside, they were left truly alone for the first time in months.

And right then, there had been too much to say. She didn't know where to start. And in truth, she's scared that if she did, she might crumble. For her children, she could hold it together - it was a necessity that would accept no compromise. But with Andrew, there was every temptation to fall apart with the relief and she's not ready for that either.

There's a beat, a moment, before he envelops her in his arms, face sinking down into her shoulder. "I missed you," he breathes, words muffled against her neck, and it takes everything she has not to shatter right then and there, to collapse into him knowing that the nightmare was now over. "God, Mere, I missed you," he repeats, and his openness splits something inside of her. He sounds absolutely wrecked, and she thinks that if he breaks down, that she might as well.

Instead she just lifts his face and kisses him long and slowly, because anything else seems too meager. There's nothing more she wants than to anchor herself to him, like he's the calm centre of a storm that's been raging. He seems somehow safe and untouchable. The worst is over now, she knows, but the raw fear hasn't worn off quite yet. Clinging to him quietens her mind enough that she can forget - just for a time - what she's been through.

It takes only seconds for her to remember how his mouth, his body, feels - not that she thinks she ever could have forgotten, not really. He's only been in her life for a fraction of her many years, and yet it feels so much longer - like his importance is so much more integral than their time together suggests. She's been touch deprived for too many months, and so the slide of his hands - as innocent as it is right now - is like a kick start that sends her body roaring to life.

He's more than sex to her, of course. She loves him - words she never thought she'd say again, truth be told. But Andrew's proven himself to be the exception to all of her rules, and so while yes - she wants nothing more than to abandon herself to him, she also just wants to bask in the intimacy between them that she's missed so dearly.

There's a cry from inside - Ellis is calling out for her, and it's Andrew that pulls away at the sound, rather than her. "We need to-"

"-stop," she agrees, with a nod of her head and a squeeze of her hand around his wrist. "For now."

"For now," he echoes, and even with those two words she can hear how little self-restraint he has left.

They spend the next few hours playing with the children. She's eager to make up for lost time, and just take comfort of their presence. Being parted from them had been excruciating and something she never wants to experience again. Maggie hovers until she has to go to work, and Andrew busies himself in the kitchen, cooking batches of food that she knows will overflow her refrigerator for days. 

After a loud and calamitous lunch, full of fraught eye contact that was quickly becoming untenable, he pulls her quietly aside. "I have to go to the hospital," he murmurs, a hand snaking onto her hip, a flame instantly rising inside her. There's a hollow at the base of his throat that she would kiss if her children hadn't been in the room with them.

"Really?" She hates the idea of him going so soon.

"I couldn't get anyone to cover my shift," he says, looking regretfully at his phone. "I'm sorry. I'd much rather be here."

She doesn't doubt him for a second. But she also knows this means he'll be gone for hours - likely until the next day, and the idea of being parted from him already cuts far deeper than she thought it would. It's not his fault, and she doesn't blame him. This had all happened so fast and really, hasn't she upended his life enough recently?

She reaches up and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, carefully chaste even though the children are preoccupied with their various tasks. "It's fine."

"It's not fine," he grumbles, turning his head just enough to catch her fully on the lips the second time. His voice drops suddenly, a hint of a smirk appearing on his features. "And I absolutely need to show you just how much I missed you as soon as possible." 

The thought had sustained her after he left, backpack over one shoulder, and motorcycle helmet in hand. The sight of him disappearing off down the street fills her with a dread that she tries to quell. So many terrible things have happened. Who's to say that this wasn't the day that he'd take a corner too fast, or a car would lose control and veer into his path? Meredith knows she's being dramatic, but she's also learnt that happiness is something that can slip so quickly out of grasp, especially when it's just been found. She's trying so hard not to be that person, but old habits die hard.

The rest of the day goes quickly. In the evening she puts the children to bed and waits for Amelia to get home before making excuses that she wants to see Chief Bailey - to see if and when she can get her job back. After all, her medical license was never lost, she was free to work. Meredith knows she could leave it until the morning, but she wants to settle this now. It's been on her mind in an endless loop since the moment she was fired.

And that's how she's ended up here, with Andrew too close for comfort, and yet not nearly as close as she wants him to be. Even now, she has visions of him pinning her against the nurse's station, and it's only with common sense and her last remaining sliver of resolve that she doesn't taunt him into doing it. Instead, slowly, she turns in his arms, so that they're now face to face. If anything, it really doesn't help what little control she has remaining.

"You're right - it is torture," she agrees truthfully, arching her back a little, and watching how his eyes flicker in response. She really wishes that they weren't in full sight of everyone on the floor. She knows she's an object of curiosity, now that she's here, and she doesn't need to be making quite such a scene already, and certainly not for these reasons. "But I'm here to grovel to get my job back, and you're here to work, and everything else has to wait."

She's right, but she also recognises the look on his face. It's not dissimilar to the one on her own, she's sure. "_Three months_, Mere," he mutters, even though she can hear the bemusement underlying it. "I'm not sure I can wait three more minutes."

She stifles a laugh. "Dr. DeLuca," she scolds, even though she knows from experience that the more she calls him that, the more he likes it. "This is no fun for me either."

He looks at her skeptically, a tilt of his head, a soft smile. "If you say so. Will you be awake when I get home?"

His use of the word 'home' doesn't escape her, even though they've not even had a chance yet to discuss the way his things now litter her bedroom, how he's taken up residence on one side of the bed. It would be so easy for her to tell him now that she never wants him to leave, although she knows it's a conversation better suited for another day.

"I can't promise that," she replies. Honestly, the day has already been so long and she's emotionally exhausted. Even now she's pretty sure she's only running on the adrenaline of his proximity. "But," and it's then, for the first time since she arrived that she allows her hand to graze his upper arm, "I do give you permission to wake me."

His smile broadens, and he leans down closer to her ear. "Oh, don't worry, Dr. Grey. I'll take you up on that." A shiver runs down her neck at the way he enunciates every syllable. "And I'm going to be spending the next few hours very carefully deciding exactly... _how_ best to wake you."

To hell with it, she thinks, as her fists curl against the lapels of his lab coat, eyes searching for the nearest on call room. Twenty minutes will have to do.


End file.
